A long but fragile life ends: Peart’s family cherishes strength that she provided

Thursday, June 28, 2001 | 9 a.m.

On the living room wall of the Las Vegas home where Virginia Peart lived since 1956 is an embroidered artwork that warns: "Life is fragile, handle with prayer."

The home is bathed in the warm glow of grandmotherly fixtures -- antique furniture, handmade dolls and scores of framed pictures of family members.

An intruder entered that home last Thursday and ended a life that for 84 years had been devoted to love, kindness and charity for all.

"This is not a house where my mother resided, it was a home where she lived and loved," said John Peart, who learned from his mom the importance of family unity. "To my mother, we were first and foremost a family unit -- there was no animosity, only love. She kept our family together through times that were not always rosy."

Services for the Las Vegas resident of 47 years are pending.

Peart, a mother of six, grandmother of 37 and great-grandmother of 48, could look at the individual miniature portraits on the walls throughout her three-bedroom home east of Nellis Boulevard off Owens Avenue and, without pausing, give the names, ages and birthdays of all of the beaming young faces.

Despite her advanced years, she enjoyed good health and had much to anticipate, such as the wedding this Saturday of one of her grandchildren and the upcoming holidays that she insisted be celebrated in her home, where she would prepare meals for as many as 50 loved ones.

Although Peart no longer will physically guide her family through this and other tough times -- as well as memorable occasions -- her son said her indomitable spirit will live on in everyone she touched.

"You could have met my mother just once and remembered her for the rest of your life," John Peart said. "An assemblyman who lives nearby remembered my mother, having met her once while going door-to-door, and recalled being welcomed into her home. That's how trusting my mother was."

She was born Virginia Evans on Aug. 26, 1916, in Preston, Idaho, the third youngest of nine children of mule team driver James Eddie Evans and the former Minnie Warrick. As a would-be majorette and junior at Preston High School, she met champion drum major John Lynn Pert of nearby Richmond High, a senior who was brought in to teach the Preston girls how to properly march.

Despite being from rival schools, they became high school sweethearts and on July 29, 1936, two years after she graduated, they married. They had their first child the next year. The family moved around as James Evans tried to find work -- first for the Civil Conservation Corps, then for the railroad, followed by a stint of running a restaurant and another working for an awning installation company in Mesa, Ariz.

While in Arizona, the Evanses were told that the King Awning Company in Las Vegas had openings, because it had just won the contract for the Desert Inn. The family moved to Las Vegas in 1954. After the awning job was done, James again found himself out of work but soon was hired by the Union Pacific Railroad, where he worked until his retirement. He died in 1981. Virginia did not remarry.

In 1981 she fulfilled alone the couple's longstanding desire to go on a LDS mission to Reno. Throughout her life she was devoted to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, serving as a primary and Sunday school teacher and on the Relief Society.

A skilled genealogist, she traced six generations of her own family and did the the research for hundreds of others. In the 1970s she helped translate from Spanish the genealogies of Catholic families of the Southwest.

An avid motorist, the octogenarian was known to drive hundreds of miles by herself to Utah to visit relatives.

"My mother was very independent," John Peart said. "And despite how my mother died, she would want people to know she loved Las Vegas, and she and my father always said this was a great town with great opportunities -- a great place to live and raise a family."

In addition to her son, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, Peart is survived by three other sons, Edward Peart and Gerald Peart, both of North Carolina, and Joseph Peart of Las Vegas; two daughters, Susan Edwards-Stott and Lori Diamond, both of Texas; a brother, Charles Evans of Phoenix; and three sisters, Betty Goff and Valetta Petterborg, both of St. George, Utah, and Ruby Howarth of Oregon.